


All For One and One For All

by ChancellorGriffin



Category: The 100 (TV)
Genre: Angst, Canonical Character Death, Childhood Friends, Childhood Memories, F/M, Friendship/Love, Heartbreak, No Fluff, No Sex, No Smut, Pining, Pre-Canon, Sad Ending, Unrequited Love
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-02-07
Updated: 2016-02-07
Packaged: 2018-05-18 00:38:04
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 9,763
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5891275
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ChancellorGriffin/pseuds/ChancellorGriffin
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Marcus Kane realizes he's in love with one of his two best friends just before she tells him she's in love with the other one.</p>
            </blockquote>





	All For One and One For All

**AGE EIGHT **

They meet on the first day of class, in Earth Skills.  Jake and Marcus are eight, but Abby is eight and a _half_ , which makes her the obvious leader even though she’s half their size.  “Split up into groups of three,” says Mr. Pike, and that’s how it begins.

Abby Walters is the smartest girl in the whole class and everybody wants to be her friend. She plays sometimes with Mr. Pike’s son Charlie, and with Jake’s friend Thelonius, and a girl named CeCe whose parents live next door to her. Abby likes everybody and everybody likes her. But there’s a clear inner circle and outer circle; and on that first day of class, when the all-important boundaries between social groups are drawn, it’s Marcus Kane and Jake Griffin that she picks.

Jake is the tallest boy and the funniest and he’s really good at soccer, so they’re a natural pairing. He’s sitting on Abby’s right, and when he leans over and says “Want to be in my group?” of course she says yes. It’s so easy, so obvious.

But Marcus Kane is skinny and shy and pale, and he has dark hair that’s always a little too long, a little unkempt, with one thick lock that’s always falling forward into his face.  And something of his mom’s intense religiousness has seeped into his bones a bit, maybe, because he’s just a little too serious.  He can’t for the life of him figure out why the tiny girl with her long hair in two shiny braids turns around in her seat when Mr. Pike hands out the assignments and says, “Will you be in our group?”

He’s so convinced she’s making fun of him that he doesn’t answer right away, stares down at his desk, awkward and tense and already mortified even though she hasn’t done anything yet.

She tries again.

“Is your name Marcus?” she asks patiently, even though it’s written on his nametag so she can clearly tell that it is. He nods a little, not looking up.

“My name’s Abby,” she says. “Will you be in my group?”

“How come?” he asks her, and it’s a startlingly bold question for a kid like Marcus Kane.  He doesn't ask direct questions when he can help it.  Direct questions get you walloped in the Kane household sometimes, if it's been a bad night and Dad had too much to drink.  Mostly Marcus tries not to talk at all, to anyone. 

But Abby's different.  He can already tell.

“How come what?” she repeats, furrowing her brow a little.

“How come you picked me?”

She gives him a puzzled look. “Because I want to be _friends_ ,” she says, as though it’s the most obvious thing in the world, and to Abby Walters it probably is, but it’s this is uncharted territory for Marcus, he’s off the map, he doesn’t trust it, nobody except his mother has ever been kind to him unless they want something, and he doesn’t know what Abby wants.

“Nobody wants to be friends with me,” he says, surprised into a burst of unexpected honesty, and Abby’s warm kind eyes look him over as though she can see all the way inside him, like he's made of glass and all the things that make him Marcus are floating around right there in front of her and she can see it all, even the bad things, the things he hides away, she sees every last piece of him and she doesn't look away.

“ _I_ want to,” she says firmly, and that’s that.

* * *

 

** AGE TEN **

Mr. Pike nicknames them “The Three Musketeers” and it sticks, although Abby has to ask her dad what a “musketeer” is.

“It’s from a book,” he tells her. “They have it in the library.”

So Abby goes after class and checks out the book and brings it back to their secret hideout, and over the next six months, they read it out loud, together.

The hideout is Jake’s contribution. There’s a maintenance corridor on Alpha Station near the wing where their classrooms are, and Jake’s dad – who works on the repair crew – shows Jake a bulkhead with one loose metal panel that’s big enough for a kid to climb through. Inside the walls there’s two steps down and then it opens up into a small room, tall enough for them to stand up in (for now, anyway) but small enough to be cozy.  Mr. Griffin knows that Marcus doesn’t have a lot of places he can go when his dad gets into the moods he gets into, and he knows that Mr. Walters is strict and gets mad if Abby’s not always studying. So he winks at Jake and he forges a maintenance work order that indicates the bulkhead’s loose panel has been fixed, and when Jake brings Marcus and Abby along for the first time to show it to them, there’s a sign on the inside of the door that says “JAKE AND MARCUS AND ABBY’S SECRET HIDEOUT.”

Nobody has ever given Marcus a present like this before. Nobody has ever looked at him and handed him exactly what he needed.

But Jake Griffin has a nice dad.

 _I bet he’s going to be a nice dad too, when he grows up,_ Marcus thinks, and the thought of that makes him happy and sad at the same time. He hopes it’s not set in stone, the idea that boys grow up to be like their dads. He hopes that maybe somewhere there’s a loophole for him.  Henry Kane isn’t the kind of person that his son wants to grow up to be.

“This is the most amazing place in the whole world,” says Abby, her face lighting up, and she flings her tiny arms around first Jake, then Marcus, pulling them tight in a three-person hug.

By the time they finish reading _The Three Musketeers_ , the hideout has been thoroughly outfitted.  A scrap of carpet to cover the cold metal floor, a pile of pillows and blankets for laying on, a little shelf for books, and even a table for them to eat their snacks. This is where they keep all their most special things. Marcus draws a picture of Abby for her birthday and she loves it so much she hangs it on the wall. Jake keeps his soccer ball in here. Not the one he really uses, the one for when they go down to the hangar and play real games, but the old one, the special one, the one his dad gave him that he says came from the ground.

Marcus has never belonged anywhere. Marcus lives in one big room with his mom and dad where the only privacy is in the bathroom. He has never had a door with a sign that has his name on it and he loves it better than anywhere else in the whole world.

After they finish the book, Marcus gets his best pens and paper and uses his best handwriting to make a banner that he hangs over the bookshelf with their favorite line from the book:

_All For One, and One For All._

* * *

 

** AGE EIGHTEEN **

Marcus and Jake outgrow the ability to stand up inside the hideout by the time they hit their teens, so they don’t use it as much. It ceases to become the every-day-after-school spot for snacks and homework and reading and games, and becomes instead the place where important moments are shared.  It’s for emergencies, now.  It’s for the moments where they need to feel that sense of safety, of home, where they need the protective bubble of the ten years of love that binds them together.

So this is where they go when Marcus’ dad dies.

They don’t arrange it.  They just arrive here, naturally, one by one, as though there’s no other place they would ever have ended up.

The funeral ends, the body is released out the airlock, and Vera returns with the rest of the congregation down to the Eden Tree to pray for the repose of Henry Kane’s soul.  But Marcus can’t bear to be around church people right now. The funeral was a little sickening, honestly; all those people who love his mother, struggling out of respect for her to find something kind to say about the cold, angry man she married, most of their words landing somewhere between overly sentimental cliché and outright lies. He’s sad that his mother is sad, and he’s sad at himself that he isn’t sadder, but that’s the best he can do right now and he’s exhausted from being asked to give any more than that. So he walks back from the airlock towards home but his feet turn left instead of right and he finds himself at the hideout for the first time in he can’t remember how long, and of course the panel is already ajar, because Abby is inside waiting for him.

She doesn’t say anything.

There’s nothing to say.

She doesn’t ask him how he’s doing, she doesn’t say she’s sorry for his loss, she doesn’t tell him Henry Kane is in a better place, and she doesn’t tell him she understands his pain. Instead, she holds out her arms.

She’s sitting on one of the cushions with her back against the wall and Marcus sits down beside her and lets her wrap her arms around him, pulling him close, holding him against her chest, and she runs her fingers through the loose, floppy lock of dark hair that falls over his forehead. She likes his hair a lot, for some reason, she’s always touching it. She hates when he wears it hair slicked back, like his dad does – like his dad _did,_ Marcus reminds himself, still getting used to the past tense. She likes it when his hair just hangs loose and soft so she can play with it. “You have such nice hair,” she’s always telling him.

So he lets himself sink into her body, and even though she’s small, so very much smaller than he is, she’s the only thing in the whole world strong enough to hold him up.  She’s a tiny little life raft in a rolling black sea, but he’s safe in her arms anyway, and she will not let him fall.  She will not let the darkness swallow him.

He doesn’t quite sleep but he disappears for a little while, to some dark interior place, he doesn’t know for how long, his face nestled into her narrow shoulder as she runs a gentle hand through his hair to soothe him.  And then there's warmth, suddenly, pressing into his back, and the two arms around him become four, because Jake is here now too, he is safe within their embrace, he is sheltered, he is _seen._ Jake and Abby will never leave him, they are the Three Musketeers, they are best friends, they are family, and on the worst day of Marcus Kane’s life there is nowhere he’d rather be than right here with the only two people in the world he trusts enough to let them see him cry.

“We’re right here,” says Jake firmly, his embrace warm and reassuring, and Marcus feels so vast and dark and heavy, weighted with something that isn’t quite sorrow but is a loss anyway – not the loss of the father he had been given, but maybe the finality of the absence of a better father – and it’s like a bubble rising up from underwater, mounting pressure from some place deep inside himself that swells and rises and bursts until the tears finally come, and he cries himself to sleep that night cradled tightly in Jake and Abby’s arms.

* * *

 

**AGE TWENTY-THREE **

It’s after midnight when he hears the knock at the door.

Vera is already sleeping, curled up against the wall in the corner of the big, empty bed. It’s always puzzled Marcus why she doesn’t sleep in the middle of it; his father has been dead for six years now, but Vera stays on the same side of the bed, leaving that empty space as though Henry has just gotten up for a glass of water and will be right back. It unsettles him, a little, like his mother shares a bed with a ghost.  But of course he cannot say this to Vera.

He explained it once to Abby, though, and she understood immediately. Abby always understood.

The knock startles him as he’s preparing to climb into bed himself. He sleeps in the front left corner of the room, opposite the little nook with the small table where they work and eat. Vera Kane’s position within the church is certainly viewed with respect, but she’s not important enough to merit quarters in the outer ring where there are windows and separate bedrooms, so Marcus and his mother share one open space. His bed is close to the door, and the knock is soft – it doesn’t wake Vera – which means he knows before he even opens it who he’s going to see on the other side.

She’s fidgety tonight, with a tense expression on her face he can’t read, and she’s wrapping her thin, threadbare sweater tightly and protectively around her the way she does when she’s nervous about something.

“Are you all right?” he asks immediately, and she nods first, then shakes her head. Yes. No. She isn’t sure.

“Can we talk?” she asks him, a strange note in her voice, and he nods.  He grabs his sweater and his keys and steps out into the hallway, closing the door noiselessly behind him.  “Let’s go to the hideout,” she says unexpectedly, not looking at him as she makes her way down the hall, and he feels his heart begin to beat a little faster. He feels a strange shivery sensation – first cold, then hot – rush over him.

They don’t go there much anymore – the boys are both far too tall to fit comfortably into that bulkhead, and they can’t stand up inside the inner room. It’s still there, it still belongs to them, full of fifteen years of memories.  But they’re adults now; they don’t have to sneak away from their parents anymore. They can go anywhere they want.

If Abby wants to go to the hideout, it means she has something important to say.

It’s a tight fit through the bulkhead and he’s careful not to hit his head on the ceiling as he follows the nimble Abby down to the little room. She sits on the floor, cross-legged, with her back against the wall, and motions for him to sit, not next to her, not side-by-side (the way she usually prefers to have important conversations) but in front of her. Eye to eye.

It’s the third thing she’s done in twenty minutes that’s completely unlike her, and Marcus is trying to work it out in his mind as hard as he can.

She’s staring down at the floor. She can’t meet his eyes. Whatever she has to say is serious. And Jake isn’t here. She hasn’t even said his name. Which means the thing she has to say is only for Marcus. And there are so few things they don’t share between the three of them.

There are so few things it could possibly be.

He looks at her sitting across from him, fidgeting with the frayed sleeve of her sweater, looking smaller than usual, looking timid and almost shy, and he watches as she collects herself to speak, and then just as she takes a breath to open her mouth, he goes hot and cold all over as the pieces fall into place.

He remembers the eight-year-old girl with shiny dark braids turning around in her desk to look at him and he remembers the sound of her voice reading about Athos and Milady and he remembers the feel of her arms around him on the day of his father’s funeral and he remembers a thousand other moments over the past fifteen years, and there's a great sharp roar inside his chest, the sound of a vast thing cracking open, a thing inside him that he didn’t know the name for but he knows the name for it now.

So you see, it’s nobody’s fault. Not really. Because Marcus didn’t know. How could he? Nobody had ever explained this to him.

But now Abby’s looking at him with her dark serious eyes and collecting her thoughts to speak and he knows, suddenly, all the way down to his bones, what she’s brought him here to say.

He is in love with Abby, and Abby is in love with him.

Everything is about to change.

His heart begins to race in his chest, hammering at his ribcage with violent force because _that’s_ what this is, of _course_ that’s what it is, he’s in love with her, he’s _always_ been in love with her, and she’s brought him here to say it to him, in their special place, in the place they grew up together, the place that represents their love, and he feels overwhelmed by a happiness so keen it’s almost painful.

“I have to tell you something,” she says again, and he nods, gently, encouragingly, because she must be scared too, she must be as scared as he is.  "It's a big thing to say," she goes on, "and I want to get the words right."

And it is, she's right, it is a big thing to say, it will change everything between them, there’s no way for it not to, but he wants her to know it’s going to be okay.  He wants her to know that he’s in this too, he’s going to say it back, it’s safe, she’s safe, there’s nothing to be afraid of.  His eyes are warm and his smile is kind and he reaches out to take her hand.

“You can tell me anything,” he says, and the pounding of his heart is so hard and fast now that he’s convinced she can hear it, everyone on the Ark can hear it, Marcus Kane’s heart is the loudest sound in the world, and he squeezes her hand in his – it feels so good to hold it, to be permitted to touch her like this, now that they’re about to say what they’re about to say to each other – and he’s ready, he’s ready, she’s going to open her mouth and she’s going to change his life forever and he’ll never be alone again, and it’s _happening_ , she’s looking directly at him, her dark eyes are shining with tears, and then she speaks.

“I think I’m in love with Jake,” she says, and something in him shatters.

* * * * *

The silence goes on for a little too long. 

But other than that, all told, he holds it together about as well as can reasonably be expected.

His hand trembles a little bit in hers, and for a moment he can’t quite look at her because the only thing in the world right now that matters is not letting her see him cry.  He steels himself, he swallows hard, and he takes the tiny piece of his heart that, just for a minute, for one little minute, opened itself up to let in the light, and he closes it back up and puts it away.

At first, all he can say is, “Oh.”

“You’re surprised,” she says, and he nods.  It’s easier than talking. “I was surprised too,” she admits. “I didn’t know. I thought we were just friends, you know, I thought that’s what it was, the thing I felt.  That it was normal that when I was around him – “

“That it was different than with me,” he says flatly, and she’s so grateful to him for saying it that she doesn’t even catch the tone.

“Yes,” she agrees. “But I just thought – I don’t know what I thought. I didn’t know. But then, last night, we went for a walk, he came to meet me after work and we just walked around the ship and talked about nothing and I realized I’d never really been _alone_ with him, you know, not really, there was always someone else around, and it was so easy to be with him, as easy as it ever was, but there was something else too, some, I don’t know, some new other thing, I didn’t know what it was. And then we passed by one of the windows and stopped to watch the moonrise, and it was so beautiful, we just stood there watching it for a long time, and then . . .” And she pauses, just for a moment, and he watches as she disappears into herself, with a soft, shy, private smile – a smile that’s for Jake, not for him, it will never be for him – and goes on, “and that’s when I knew.”

“Does he,” begins Marcus, then stops, unsure whether to go on, unsure what the right answer is to the question he’s not sure if he has a right to ask, or even wants to know. At this point, does it matter? It’s already over. He had fifteen seconds, between the moment his own heart made itself known to him and the moment it broke. Fifteen seconds when he felt a happiness so potent that the sensation of having it snatched away so abruptly is vertiginous, like falling.

So it doesn't matter, really, whether the answer to the question is yes or no. There's no good choice.

But still. He can’t not say it.

“Does he, do you think he – that he feels the same way?”

“I don’t know,” she says, but there’s hope shining in her eyes that makes her words a lie. She _does_ think so, he thinks dully. And she’s probably right.

He was wrong.  It _does_ matter whether the answer is yes or no. 

He never knew until this moment that there's a streak inside him that's this petty, a tiny treasonous corner of his heart that would feel such relief if Jake broke Abby's heart . . . a dark little hissing voice whispering into his ear that if she can't love Marcus, the next best thing is for them both to be miserable together.

What a horrible thing to think about your two best friends.

What a monster he is.

_No wonder -_

But no, that line of thought is even worse.  _You were never going to be this to her,_ he tells himself firmly.  _There was never anything you could have done or any different man you could have been if the man she wants is Jake._

She hopes - believes - but doesn't _know_ \- whether Jake loves her.  But Marcus does.

Because how could he not?

How could anyone possibly not?

He swallows hard again, pressing the bubble of sorrow rising up through his chest back down again as far as he can.

“Is it okay that I’m telling you this?” she asks suddenly, and her eyes are sharp and keen, as though she’s finally noticed that something is off.

“Why wouldn’t it be okay?” he says carefully, his tone measured and calm. She tilts her head, regards him thoughtfully for a long time.

“You don’t seem like yourself,” she answers finally.

“I’m fine.”

“I don’t want to put you in a difficult position,” she says. “Since he’s your friend too.  I don’t want you to have to keep secrets from him.”

“That’s not – “

“I’m going to tell him,” she adds hastily. “I just wanted to talk to you about it first.”

“Why?”

“Because I love you,” she tells him, a hint of surprise in her voice, as though astonished that he somehow missed that obvious fact. “You’re my best friend, Marcus. You’re the only person I can talk to.” She crawls across the metal grate to where he sits and she lifts up his arm and drapes it around her shoulder and she curls up into the hard angles of his body and rests her head on his chest. “You’re like family to me,” she says.

He wants it to be enough.

He wants so badly for it to be enough.

He doesn’t _want_ to feel like this.

She's so happy, her heart is so full, and he _wants_ to be happy for her, for them, and he hates himself because he can't.

He wants to wind back the clock to twenty minutes ago before Abby Walters said the thing she said. He wants to _not know._ Everything was easier when he didn’t know.

Marcus twenty minutes ago would have pulled Abby close against his chest, ruffled her hair, and said, “Tell me everything,” and she would have told him everything. Marcus twenty minutes ago would have listened thoughtfully, been a good friend, given sound advice, reassured her, talked her through what to say. He would have stayed there with her, his arm wrapped protectively around her shoulder, until they had sorted out everything.  And then he would have hugged her goodbye and they would have parted and he would have gone back to his room and climbed in bed and slept peacefully with no idea that there was a hurricane locked up in a box inside his chest, which he would have been entirely safe from because _he didn't know._

But now he can’t do any of those things. All he can do is wrap his sweater closer around his chest and try to ride out the storm as it passes through his body and leaves an echoing hollow where his heart used to be.  He tries to press it back downward, this rising ache inside his chest where everything feels empty now.

He looks down at the top of her head with helpless, hopeless love, and all he can do is think about those fifteen seconds, over and over and over again, as he stares at the faded sign hanging crookedly on the wall across from them, at the painstakingly-drawn blue and green letters (Jake and Abby’s favorite colors), and reads the words that were true for over a decade but will now never be true again.

_All For One, and One For All._

He lets go of her hand - for the last time - and that's the end of the Three Musketeers.

They never go back to the hideout again.

* * *

 

**AGE TWENTY-FOUR**

Six months before the wedding, Abby’s father dies.

They don’t meet up at the hideout, this time – though there’s a part of Marcus that almost wishes they would, a selfish and cruel part of him that would like to be even some small part of the place she goes for comfort. But it’s not like Henry Kane, it’s not a sad, feeble tribute of hollow words. Gregory Walter was a retired member of the Council and the head of the Medical Studies program and his funeral is a grand and glorious ritual of pomp and circumstance. He sees Abby in the crowd but can’t get near her; Jake is there, with his arm around her, and she’s leaning into his body for support.

She has Jake.

Jake will never leave her side. Not ever again.

Jake will never not be standing right there.

He catches her eye through the crowd and she sees him. Her face, pale and expressionless, comes to life at the sight of him, and he sees her mouth the words, _You’re here._

 _Always,_ he mouths back, and she smiles gratefully, wearily, but she doesn’t understand.

* * * * *

It’s a month or so after that when Jake knocks at his door with a request that takes all Marcus’ composure to accept graciously.

Because now, of course, Abby has no one to walk her down the aisle.

“She loves you so much,” says Jake. “You’re like the brother she never had. Please. It would mean so much to us. You’re the only one who can do it.”

It would not have been unreasonable, finally, after all this time, for Marcus to say something. To stop the train in its tracks right here. _I am in love with her,_ he could say. _I won’t stand in the way of your happiness, because I love you both too much for that. But surely you can see why it’s not possible for me to be the one who walks her down the aisle to marry another man._

Surely you understand why that is too much to ask.

But he doesn’t say any of that. Because the thing is –

It’s _Jake_ asking.

Not Abby.

Abby did not come to him and say, “Please will you do this for me.” Jake came to Marcus and said, “Please will you do this for Abby.”

Jake knows something he doesn’t.

Jake is trying to save Abby from something. Jake can see something that Abby wants, that Abby needs, that Abby herself does not have the words to ask for, and he has come to Marcus because it’s the three of them, again, one of them needs something that the other two can provide. Abby’s grief for her father is silent and lodged deep and the father-shaped empty space in her wedding can’t be filled by anyone else except the only person in the world she loves very nearly as much as she loves the man she’s about to marry.

Marcus loves her too well to let her get married with a hole in her heart, and he loves Jake too, with all his heart, for how hard he’s trying.

They both just want to make her happy.

That’s all they’ve ever wanted.

Please don’t do this, please don’t do this, cries the one sane, sensible voice left in his mind. But he silences it and looks over at Jake and does his best to smile.

“Of course,” he says, his hand on Jake’s shoulder. “Of course I will.”

* * * * *

Jake can’t sleep the night before the wedding, so Marcus comes over to have a few drinks and sleep on Jake’s couch to keep him company. He wants to suggest the hideout, but doesn’t. Abby is with CeCe tonight anyway, they’re doing some big girls’ thing, and it wouldn’t feel right without her. So they sit side by side on the couch, long into the night, staring out the window at the stars.

“This time tomorrow, I’ll be her husband,” says Jake, as though the wonder of it all is still overwhelming to him, and Marcus is proud of himself for how natural his voice sounds, how faint and brief the hesitation, before he answers.

“Yes,” he says carefully. “That’s true.”

“I would never have thought,” says Jake, shaking his head ruefully. “All those years – way back when we were kids –“ He gives a light laugh. “Me and Abby,” he says. “I would never have thought.”

“I know,” says Marcus absently, staring out the window as hard as he can, “me neither,” and he must have let the mask slip for a moment, he must have lost control, because Jake sets his glass down on the table suddenly, hard, and he turns to Marcus, and there’s a searching, questioning look in his eyes, like he can see straight through to the inside of his soul.

“Marcus,” says Jake, and there’s so much gravity in his voice, it’s urgent and a little desperate. “Marcus.”

“Why are you looking at me like that?” asks Marcus, trying to brush it off with a casual little laugh, but Jake shakes his head. He isn’t buying it. He can’t tear his eyes off Marcus’ own, he’s digging down into their depths to see what’s there and he suddenly looks afraid.

“You’re my best friend,” says Jake, imploring him. “And I need you to tell me the truth.”

 _No, you don’t,_ thinks Marcus heavily. _You really, really, really don’t._

“Is there any reason,” asks Jake in a carefully measured tone, then stops again. “Can you give me any reason,” he tries again, “why there’s – why I shouldn’t –“

“It’s late,” says Marcus, desperate to shut this down before Jake finally works his way around to asking what he really wants to know, slamming a trap door shut on Marcus who has very carefully managed so far never to actually lie. He finishes his drink and sets down his glass and stands up to go. Jake follows him to the door.

“Marcus,” he tries again, but doesn’t get any further than that before Marcus wraps his arms around him, holding him in a close embrace.

“You make each other happy,” he says to Jake. “I just want you both to be happy.”

“Marcus.”

“I’ll see you at the wedding,” says Marcus, a little too brightly, tipping his hand a bit as he backs out the door, but he recovers well, and when he turns back to Jake before leaving he’s composed himself. Whatever Jake thinks he saw, buried deep in the depths of Marcus Kane’s eyes or hiding in the nearly imperceptible falter in his voice, it’s gone now.

 _You just imagined it,_ he tells him silently. _Let it go. There’s nothing there._

There’s nothing.

“Get some sleep,” he says to Jake, with a smile so very nearly genuine that it eases the knot in Jake’s chest completely. “Can’t be late for your own wedding.”

“Thank you,” says Jake, warmly and sincerely. “For everything.” He puts a hand on Marcus’ shoulder. “We love you so much.”

_We._

They’re a “we” now.

“I’m just so happy for you,” says Marcus, and as he walks away down the corridor back to his own rooms, back to the safety of darkness and silence, he tells himself that it doesn’t really count as a lie if you wish this desperately for it to be true.

* * *

 

**AGE THIRTY-FIVE **

He does the best he can.

Really, he does.

He walks Abby down the aisle, and he manages to smile the whole time.  He stands in front of the Eden Tree beside them with Clarke in his arms when she’s baptized, as her godfather. He has dinner with them every Sunday and he never misses a birthday and he tries as hard as he can to be the best friend, to be the family, that Abby Walters – now Abby Griffin – told him that night in the hideout was what she wanted him to be.

There are days when he can almost push those fifteen seconds out of his head for a few hours at a time. There are days that are almost normal. Almost happy. There are days that he thinks, _I can do this. I can live like this._

Marcus Kane is doing pretty well. He has a seat on the Council, and if Thelonious wins the election next year Marcus will be his second-in-command. He has the Griffins. He has books. His new quarters are on the outer ring, which means for the first time in his life his bedroom has a window.

It isn’t a bad life.

 _Not everyone gets everything,_ Marcus thinks. He has been given a great deal. Maybe it’s greedy to want more. Maybe it’s ungrateful to resent it, the way it feels to wake up every morning in a cold bed, in a world where everyone has an other half but him.  A world where everyone seems to have figured the thing out, cracked some code that Marcus hasn’t.

If you can’t have something, there’s no point in letting yourself want it.  That’s how people end up getting hurt.

He does the best he can.

Really he does.

He holds out until Clarke’s tenth birthday party, and that’s when everything falls apart.

They've been learning about population science in their Ark History class, about the contraception implants and the Ark's one-child law.  Clarke is so high on birthday giddiness that she's a trifle insane, and she peppers Marcus with questions the second he walks in the door.  Wells and Thelonious Jaha are there already, and the weary look on Thelonious' face indicates to Marcus that he's already has his turn at the hands of the Grand High Inquisitor.

"Marcus, Marcus, Marcus!" Clarke exclaims, hopping up and down and pouncing on him as he enters.  "Come talk to me!"

"Can you let him catch his breath for a minute?" laughs Jake, exchanging an apologetic shrug with Marcus, who grins back at him.

"It's fine," he says.  "I don't mind."  And he lets Clarke pull him down next to her on the sofa.

"We learned in class about the baby rule," she says importantly.

"And what did you learn?"

"That there's not enough water and food and stuff on the Ark for everyone to have a billion jillion trillion babies, so every family only gets one."

"That's right."

"But you don't _haaaaave_ to have a baby.  Right?  You can have one baby if you _want_ one, but some people don't have _any_."

"That's true," answers Marcus.  "You don't have to have one."

"How come _you_ don't have one?" she asks, and Marcus can feel Jake and Abby freeze behind him, just for a moment, hesitating, wondering what he'll say.  Wondering if they should step in, if this is too invasive.  Too rude.

Because they don't actually talk about this.

Marcus has never been in a relationship.  He has never been in love with someone.  They're not sure if he's even had sex.  Marcus is a unit of one, and seems perfectly content that way, and they've long since stopped attempting to fix him up on dates with coworkers of Jake's or friends of Abby's.  They tried this a lot, in the beginning; they were giddy and happy and wanted everyone to feel the same way, they wanted to believe - they insisted, over and over - that there was someone out there for Marcus.  And they've never been quite sure why it didn't take. 

So this is a question that neither of his closest friends has ever actually gotten up the courage to ask him.

"I don't have a child because I'm not married, and that's the law," he says, giving her the simplest and least informative answer to the question.

"How come you aren't married?"

"Because you have to be in love with somebody for that. And for them to be in love with you.  And then, if you want a baby, you can have one.  That's how most people do it."

“So there’s nobody on the whole Ark you would _ever_ want to have a baby with?” Clarke says, wrinkling her nose up at him doubtfully. “Not a single person in the whole world?”

“Some people get married and have babies,” he says to her, choosing his words carefully, “and some people don’t.”

“But did you ever _want_ to get married and have a baby?"

“The lives we think we want when we’re younger and the lives we have as adults aren’t always the same, Clarke,” he says. “That doesn’t mean they’re bad. It just means that things don’t always turn out the way you expect them to.”

"But -"

"That's enough nosy personal questions," says Abby, swiftly jumping in to cut Clarke off.  "Why don't we open some presents."  And there's something almost guilty in it, almost uncomfortable, as though she feels a sense of unease that Clarke might keep picking up and overturning rocks to look beneath them until she found something, and it might turn out to be something better left buried.

Jake and Abby give her a new bed - she's long since grown out of her old one and is ready for a "big-kid bed," which Jake built himself.  Marcus got her a new set of charcoal drawing pencils, and traded three weeks' liquor rations to Nygel for a pile of nearly-new white paper.  Wells goes last, handing her a bulky package wrapped in a cloth sack.

It's a toy sword.  Wells made it himself out of cardboard and metal with the edges sanded off. Clarke shrieks with delight, waving it dramatically in the air.

“Easy, kiddo,” says Jake. “Don’t stab anyone’s eye out, okay?”

“Marcus, Marcus!  It’s from your book, it’s from your book!” she exclaims with delight, waving it at Wells, who giggles as she yells _“En garde!”_

“What book?” asks Marcus, watching with amusement as she and Wells pretend to fence.

"Mom says it was your most favorite," says Clarke importantly.  She's reading it to me.  It’s about these three guys with swords in a place called France and they’re best friends and they fight for the king."

“I think I know that book,” said Marcus, smiling.

"Mom says it's about you!"

“What do you mean?”

"You and Mom and Dad," she says.  "She said you used to be best friends and they called you the Three Musketeers."

Marcus froze.

"'Used to be,'" he can't stop himself from repeating.

Jake and Abby exchange a guilty look, and something shifts in the room, like a cold wind passing through, and even Clarke seems to realize she’s said something wrong.

 _She’s ten years old and it’s her birthday,_ he tells himself sternly, _and you are a thirty-five-year-old man. Don’t say anything stupid._

So instead he looks at the clock on the wall and suddenly remembers that he needs to go meet his mother and stands up abruptly – just a little too abruptly, this is the only part he gets wrong, this is the only mistake you could have spotted if you were watching – to leave. He hugs a puzzled Clarke goodbye, pointedly avoiding her parents’ eyes, and bolts out of the Griffins’ quarters as fast as he can.

He's so desperate for escape – so desperate to get out of that room before the knot of grief tangled up in his stomach rises up through his body to become tears – that he doesn't hear Abby calling his name until she’s chased him halfway down the corridor.

“Marcus, wait,” she says, her hand on his arm, and he turns to see her standing there, out of breath, she _ran_ after him, and he's not sure why that makes it worse, but it does.  It hurts, the way she's so devastated by his sadness, the way she's so desperate to make it right.  It hurts, how much she loves him, but in the wrong way.

It would be so satisfyingly cruel to tell her.  It would feel so good.  He almost does it.  He thinks about it for a long time, as she looks up at him, eyes puzzled and hurt, her hand on his sleeve.  _If we can't both be happy,_ he thinks _, at least we can both be miserable together._

Because there's no way for him to say it without making her suffer.  Without making her relive, in a panic, all the nights they sat up looking at the stars with her head on his shoulders while she talked about Jake.  She would hate herself forever, for not having seen it.  Years and years of Marcus at her side, swallowing down his silent pain to be the friend she needed.  She would hate herself forever for that.

And he's hurt, and angry, and the walls he carefully built around his heartbreak aren't holding up today, and for a moment, an awful part of him wants to make her feel as unhappy as he does, so he almost says it. 

But he loves her more than he hates himself, so instead, all he says is, "I have to go."

"Marcus, please don't leave like this," she says.  "We love you.  She didn't mean - it doesn't mean that we - "

"She's not wrong," he says stiffly, "we did _used to be_ friends," and the words sound cruel even to him, but he can't stop himself, because it's all tangled up now, the image of Abby lying in bed with Clarke in her arms reading about D'Artagnan, and Clarke's innocent question about Ark laws, and the way it still gives him a cold feeling all over when Jake kisses her in front of him.

What he should have said to Clarke - if he was being honest - was that sometimes you _do_ find the right person, you _do_ fall in love, you _do_ want a child - but you get there fifteen seconds too late.

"I have to go," he says, and he turns his back on her lost, unhappy face, walking away from her as fast as he can before he falls apart completely.

* * *

 

 

**AGE FORTY-TWO **

There’s quite a crowd gathered outside the door, eavesdropping while attempting to look inconspicuous. All anybody knows is that Councilor Kane has been in the Chancellor’s office for the past four hours and they’ve both been shouting.

Nobody knows what it’s about.

Nobody knows what Jake Griffin discovered about the life support systems. Not yet.

But they will.

Marcus tried to reason with him, but the conversation turned into a shouting match. Abby tried next, but didn’t get any further. Jake’s going to go public with what he knows, and since there’s no solution in place, the Ark will break out into mass hysteria. Panic, riots. Suicides, maybe; it’s happened before.

They have to stop Jake from doing what he’s about to do.

And Chancellor Jaha has decided there’s only one way to keep this secret quiet.

“You can’t possibly be serious,” exclaims Marcus, appalled, staring at Jaha in wide-eyed horror. Jaha sits back in his desk with his arms folded, cold and calm.

“I know he’s your friend, Marcus –“

“He’s your friend too.”

“Exactly. I am not unaware of the stakes here. You should know I have not taken this decision lightly. But we cannot allow this to stand.”

“Sir, there has to be another way.”

"It's treason, Marcus,” says Jaha wearily. “Jake is planning to commit treason."

“But he hasn’t done it yet,” Marcus insists. “I can talk to him again. I can stop it. I can talk to Abby.”

“You tried that. It didn’t work.”

“Shocklash him then,” says Marcus desperately. “Or, I don’t know. Slap him with a fine.  Lock him up in solitary for a month.  There has to be something else.”

“If I lock him up for a month, Marcus, all we’re doing is delaying the inevitable for one more month. He’ll go public as soon as he gets out. We’d just be stalling.”

“Threaten him, then,” suggests Marcus. “He’s a husband and a father, he doesn’t want to leave his family alone. If I told him, if I could just convince him that you were thinking about it, maybe the threat would be enough. You wouldn’t have to – to do this.”

“Do you really think,” said Jaha sensibly, “that there is any conceivable threat you could make to Jake Griffin that would get him to keep his head down and his mouth shut when he believes he’s doing the right thing?”

When Marcus was nine years old, Jake Griffin went to the school headmaster to tell him that the older boys sometimes liked to make fun of Marcus’ mom. He had overheard them laughing in the hall outside class and had wanted to hit them, and the only thing that stopped him was thinking about Marcus cowering in front of his angry dad and how hitting was the last thing in the whole world Marcus would want anyone to do in his defense. So instead he trotted into the administrative office with a list of complaints, like a tiny lawyer, and whatever the headmaster did to them afterwards, they were never rude about Vera again.

Marcus hasn’t thought about that in more than thirty years.

“You don’t have to do this,” Marcus pleads, and he can’t keep the rising panic out of his voice. “Please, sir. I’m begging you. Please don’t float him.”

“This is the job, Marcus,” says Jaha. “Do you want it or not?”

“Sir, I – what?”

“You want to be Chancellor one day,” says Jaha, and it’s not really a question. “This is what it takes. You do not have to like it, but you must _accept_ it. We are the custodians of the human race, Marcus, we are sailing through space on a life raft, and the only thing that matters is keeping as many of us alive as we can until we can make our way down to the ground. That is the Chancellor’s job. It is an endless succession of impossible decisions, at every moment of every day. It is never easy. It is rarely pleasant. It will _cost you._ Either you are prepared for it, or you are not.”

“He’s a good man,” Marcus insists. “The Ark needs people like him. We can’t just float everyone who disagrees with us.”

“It’s a capital offense, Marcus. I don’t have to enjoy it, but I have to uphold the law.”

“Sir, please –“

“The decision’s been made, Marcus.”

“She’ll blame herself for the rest of her life,” Marcus says in a low voice, choking back the knot of emotion rising up inside his chest. “She’ll feel like it was her fault. That she killed him, by coming to you.”

“She knew the risks.”

“Please, if you’d just let me talk to him one more time – “

“It’s done, Marcus,” says Jaha coldly. “The execution is scheduled for tomorrow.”

The words hit Marcus with the force of a blow to the chest, and he catches himself staggering backwards under their weight. He doesn’t manage to steady himself before the second blow arrives.

“Send those charges to Shumway for processing,” says Jaha, “I won’t put you in the position of having to make the arrests yourself. Please have two cells prepared in Prison Station for tonight.”

“Two?” says Marcus in horror, his heart racing, thinking about Abby, and he takes the handheld screen Jaha holds out to him.

But it’s not Abby.

It’s worse.

**_Griffin, Clarke._ CHARGE: _Treason._ PUNISHMENT: _Solitary Confinement Until Age of Majority, Pending Review._**

He’s horrified.

"Clarke didn't _do_ anything," he insists hotly.  "She's just a child."

"She's already told Wells," says Thelonious.  "Who else will she tell?  She needs to be quarantined.  She's dangerous, Marcus, and you know it."

"I'll talk to her," he says desperately, "I'll tell her not to say anything."

"You've hardly spoken to the Griffins in years," observes Thelonious mildly.  "You really think she'll listen to you?"

He closes his eyes.

All that wasted time, he thinks desperately. All those years, now lost, because he was afraid.

He loved Jake and Abby enough to break his own heart, but not quite enough to be brave.

But he could be brave now.

There is one last gift of love he can give to Jake, and he does it so swiftly that Jaha does not even notice. He does not see Marcus’ fingers glide over the touchscreen, changing one important number from a 3 to a 4.

Jake Griffin will never need to know his daughter was arrested on his account, because after 10 a.m. tomorrow there will be no more Jake Griffin, and Marcus has just changed the arrest warrant from today to tomorrow.

There is one last gift of love he can give to Abby, too.

“Don’t send Shumway for Jake, sir,” he says to Jaha. “Let me. I’ll do it myself.”

Thelonious looks at him appraisingly for a long moment, then nods.

"I was wrong about you, Marcus," he says.  "Maybe you do have what it takes."  He goes back to his work, a clear dismissal.  "Call me when it's done," he says without looking up, and Marcus nods and walks away.

* * * * *

Jake doesn’t resist.

Marcus wishes he would. He wishes it was uglier, somehow, he wishes there was a fight. He would feel like less of a monster if Jake fought back. But he doesn’t. Marcus doesn’t even have to bring the guards in with him because Jake comes willingly, he stands up from his seat when he sees Marcus enters and goes over to him like Marcus is just here for a visit.

“You came yourself,” he says, and his voice is so warm and mild and so utterly devoid of anger that Marcus is completely unstitched by it. “That was kind.”

Marcus can’t respond to that so instead he recites the charges, flatly, by rote, a tinge of desperation in his voice, and Jake just nods as if agreeing with him and then holds out his hands to be cuffed.

Jake is looking at Marcus.

Marcus is looking at Jake.

“You knew she’d never let herself hate Thelonious,” says Jake quietly. “She can’t afford to. But she needs to hate someone or she’ll turn all that hate inward on herself.”

“Jake – “

“You love her enough to let her hate you for the rest of your life,” he says in a low voice, and Marcus can’t look at him anymore. “Will I get to say goodbye to her?”

Marcus nods, not trusting his voice to speak more than a few words at a time. “Tomorrow morning,” he says. “They’ll come for you at 9:40. She can stay in the prison block with you tonight.”

“Will I get to say goodbye to _you_?” asks Jake, and there’s something in his voice that pulls Marcus’ eyes upward. “Or is this it?”

Marcus turns back to the guards waiting outside the glass door. He motions to them to stand down and holster their weapons. They’re surprised, but they do it anyway. Then he turns back to Jake, who nods like he understands. “I did what I had to do,” Jake says. “You did the same. The Ark is dying, Marcus, and Jaha would rather float me than let anyone find out about it. You need to decide whose side you’re on.”

“There are things we can do,” says Marcus, “there are options besides this. You could recant, you could sign a statement – We just need _time_ – “

“There was never anything you could have said to talk me out of it, Marcus,” Jake says. “Jaha probably told you this was the only way to shut me up, and he was right.”

“Jake –“

“It’s okay, Marcus,” he says. “If this is where it ends, then this is where it ends.”

“I didn’t want it to end like this,” says Marcus helplessly, and then suddenly he feels Jake’s arms around him and he’s ten years old again, curled up under the blanket on the floor of the hideout while Abby reads to them, and he doesn’t want to let go.

The guards from the hallway are startled and reach for their guns, but the prisoner isn’t hurting Councilor Kane, they’re just hugging goodbye, so they turn their backs and let them have some privacy.

Jake holds him tight and close for a long time and there are tears in their eyes when they both pull away.

“The Ark is dying, Marcus,” he says. “And if you’re not going to tell them, then you damn well better do something about it, or all of this will have been for nothing.” He looks at Marcus, his eyes serious and thoughtful and uncomfortably penetrating, like he can see straight through and into Marcus’ soul. “If you love her,” he says, “don’t let her hate you for nothing.”

Then he holds out his hands for the cuffs, and the guards enter to take him away, and Marcus Kane never sees him again.

He doesn’t go back home, that night. He walks for a long time, aimlessly, as though he isn’t sure where he’s headed – though of course, his feet make their way to the place he always knew he would end up.

The bulkhead panel is still loose – remarkably, in thirty-three years no one has ever come to repair it. Marcus was ten the first time he followed Jake through that metal opening and down the two metal ladder rungs to the open space below. He’s forty-three now. All of that was a lifetime ago.

He’s glad the hallway is deserted; he wouldn’t want anyone to walk by and see a grown man, a member of the Council, ducking low to half his height to squeeze inside an opening only barely high enough for a child and disappearing inside the walls.

Everything is the same. Smaller, of course, but he expected that. He runs his fingertips over the thick dull patina of dust on the rickety bookshelf. He touches the picture he drew of Abby. He touches Jake’s soccer ball. He touches the pillow Abby sat on the last time he came down here with her, the night he was too late by fifteen seconds to stop all of this from happening. He sits down on the floor, leaning back against the wall, and he closes his eyes.

He couldn’t save Jake.

He can only, maybe, save Abby.

 _Hate me_ , he thinks desperately. _Don’t hate yourself. Don’t hate Thelonious. Blame_ me. _Hate_ me. _Let Clarke hate me, too. Let her hate me, instead of hating you._

It’s the last gift of love he can give them. He can make himself the enemy, so that the enemy isn’t her. _Forgive yourself,_ he says to her in his mind. _This is not your fault. This is my fault. I arrested him. I did it. I pressed charges against Clarke. It wasn’t you. It wasn’t you. It was me. Let it be me._

He stays there all night, but doesn’t sleep. He sits with his back against the wall – underneath the paper sign, now faded with age, so he doesn’t have to see it – and rests his head on his knees like a child, waiting for the hours to tick by.

He does not go to the airlock. He has not earned that right. That moment is for Clarke and Abby. That moment is for the three of them only. Abby’s real family. The people she loves. It is not a place for him.

He sits on the cold metal floor of the hideout until he knows that it’s over.

On the way back to his quarters, he stops by the maintenance and repair bay. “There’s a bulkhead with a loose panel just off maintenance corridor 32-S,” he says. “Seal it up.”

And they do.

They don’t go inside, down the stairs and into the room. They can’t even see that there’s a room down there. They just hoist the panel back in place and solder the edges together, good as new. So nobody is there to see it, four hours later, when the long-dried glue that held up for thirty-two years finally fails and a paper banner, carefully lettered in green and blue, falls loose and flutters to the floor like a white flag of surrender.

_All For One, and One For All._

But it doesn’t matter.

Nobody ever goes in there again.


End file.
